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03-11-2021, 03:12 AM   #1
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electronic shutter benefits?

Hi everyone,
Given the technical limitations of an electronic shutter - e.g. no flash allowed, sensor stabilization turned off, image warping if any significant movement of target takes place, risk of banding in artificial light - I'm really struggling to think of many situations when one would seek to use it. Am I missing something ?

Has anyone found a case where it's genuinely highly beneficial ?

Every time I think of a potential case use where I'd like to try and use it -- e.g. high magnification macro use, indoor handheld photo in a quiet setting, I quickly realize that the limitations above often get in the way.

At present I can only think of two cases where I may think of using it:
1) outdoor portraits / photos with wide open apertures in outdoor, bright light conditions where the fast shutter speed of 1/24000 will allow a low f-number, but subject must be stationary and no fill flash is possible.
2) live-view shooting indoors or outdoors on a tripod of a static scene in natural light in order to minimize vibrations -- but I guess mirror lockup or self-timer would probably work just as well.

I suspect I'm not being creative enough !

Oliver

03-11-2021, 03:18 AM - 1 Like   #2
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The biggest thing is that it gets rid of shutter shock. So, I do use it a lot on a tripod, particularly when I am shooting pixel shift images.
03-11-2021, 04:39 AM   #3
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electronic shutter benefits?

Electric shutter eliminates most mechanical shock in the body. Theory is eliminates movements.
Pixel shifting on a tripod the only thing where it is advantageous.

That said I’ve never used mine


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03-11-2021, 05:52 AM   #4
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QuoteOriginally posted by on6702 Quote
1) outdoor portraits / photos with wide open apertures in outdoor, bright light conditions where the fast shutter speed of 1/24000 will allow a low f-number, but subject must be stationary and no fill flash is possible.
That is only the case IF your ES is faster than the mechanical one, which is not the case for all cameras.
And it is bad for image quality of ES lowers the bitrate of the image (100% of cameras do it to varying degrees).

QuoteOriginally posted by on6702 Quote

2) live-view shooting indoors or outdoors on a tripod of a static scene in natural light in order to minimize vibrations -- but I guess mirror lockup or self-timer would probably work just as well.
On a tripod it is easy to 100% avoid shutter times which even risk minimal shutter blur.

The single advantage I see is for parapazzos or similar sneaky shooting where you do not want any noise to expose you as taking a picture (and obviously you do not use a flash which is even worse to give your activity away).

You could also construct some extremely niche use cases where the current shutter lives of 300,000 to 500,000 actuations are at risk (say you shoot stop motion movies day in day out for years).

03-11-2021, 05:59 AM   #5
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It’s completely silent. Which can be quite useful under some situations.

FPS is only limited by sensor reading speed and processing power. This is what allows the crazy FPS in recent mirrorless cameras, which will become standard in a few years while the high end will improve even more. The DSLR are more or less stuck at the 10 FPS limit.
03-11-2021, 06:39 AM   #6
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QuoteOriginally posted by on6702 Quote
Has anyone found a case where it's genuinely highly beneficial ?
Tripod work, especially longer exposures or with longer lenses.

When reviewing the DFA 150-450mm with the 1.4x TC, I had to use a heavy tripod, the remote, 10-seconds timer AND ES to make sure I tested in ideal conditions (for the charts tests, where I needed artificial lighting).
03-11-2021, 07:34 AM   #7
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QuoteOriginally posted by beholder3 Quote
That is only the case IF your ES is faster than the mechanical one, which is not the case for all cameras.
And it is bad for image quality of ES lowers the bitrate of the image (100% of cameras do it to varying degrees).
I have not heard or read about ES lowering the bitrate of the image. Could you provide a source for that? thanks

03-11-2021, 07:51 AM   #8
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QuoteOriginally posted by on6702 Quote
Hi everyone,
Given the technical limitations of an electronic shutter - e.g. no flash allowed, sensor stabilization turned off, image warping if any significant movement of target takes place, risk of banding in artificial light - I'm really struggling to think of many situations when one would seek to use it. Am I missing something ?

Has anyone found a case where it's genuinely highly beneficial ?

Every time I think of a potential case use where I'd like to try and use it -- e.g. high magnification macro use, indoor handheld photo in a quiet setting, I quickly realize that the limitations above often get in the way.

At present I can only think of two cases where I may think of using it:
1) outdoor portraits / photos with wide open apertures in outdoor, bright light conditions where the fast shutter speed of 1/24000 will allow a low f-number, but subject must be stationary and no fill flash is possible.
2) live-view shooting indoors or outdoors on a tripod of a static scene in natural light in order to minimize vibrations -- but I guess mirror lockup or self-timer would probably work just as well.

I suspect I'm not being creative enough !

Oliver
As already stated, it's completely silent. Apart from those two use-cases I sometimes use it to take photos of my sleeping kids without fear of waking them.
03-11-2021, 08:11 AM   #9
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QuoteOriginally posted by ramseybuckeye Quote
I have not heard or read about ES lowering the bitrate of the image. Could you provide a source for that? thanks
google: "sony 12bit electronic shutter"
03-11-2021, 09:05 AM   #10
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QuoteOriginally posted by beholder3 Quote
That is only the case IF your ES is faster than the mechanical one, which is not the case for all cameras.
And it is bad for image quality of ES lowers the bitrate of the image (100% of cameras do it to varying degrees).
I used and use electronic shutter in the following situations:

1. Dentistry - during implant surgery, the dentist and his assistant do their work and it's a little disturbing for both the doctor and the patient to hear click click click for 1-2 hours.

2. Educational projects - There is a company I collaborate with who has a project that involve highschool students and theaters. Basically the teenagers have to create a story and present it on theater stage as a play in front of lots of people and actors. In exchange they benefit of free entries to actual theaters play. Given that most of the acting is quite static, I can use electeonic shutter at low shutter speeds to avoid banding without disturbing the public.

3. I use it on wildlife also if the birds are static.

I haven't seen differences in terms of image quality between electronic and mechanical shutter. I can take 2 shots with both electronic and mechanical shutter if you or anyone else want to pixel peep to see if there are visible differences in quality.
03-11-2021, 09:07 AM   #11
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I shot the last solar eclipse using my K-1's electronic shutter. All my shots were with a moderately high power, manually focused telephoto lens on a pretty solid tripod. I used Live-view the whole time and was able to see exactly what I was getting and could use the magnified display to critically focus. At this magnification, the least little jar would set the image shaking and make it impossible to get a shot but the electronic shutter came to the rescue and allowed me to get some great shots without any pre-shutter vibration effects. I've also used it the same way for wildlife photography (where there was little subject motion), and some scenics. I don't use it anywhere motion in the image is involved because of the artifacts that can be introduced.
03-11-2021, 09:20 AM   #12
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QuoteOriginally posted by beholder3 Quote
google: "sony 12bit electronic shutter"
Thanks, I did, the shutter does NOT drop the bitrate, but continuous shooting does in both types of shutters. This was taken from the Sony ILCE-9 and ILCE-9M2, the only two cameras on the chart with electronic shutters. The chart does not come through formatted, the link below has the charts in tables. Good to know because I have been using it for landscapes and they seem to be fine, I have shot some in both and could not tell any difference in results. The silence is nice in certain nature settings to not disturb wildlife (but I probably already did just getting there).

Shutter Type: Mechanical Shut
Setting Single-shot shooting*1 Continuous shooting*2 BULB shooting Long Exposure NR is activated*3
Compressed RAW 14-Bit 12-Bit 12-Bit 12-Bit
Uncompressed RAW 14-Bit 12-Bit 12-Bit 12-Bit
Shutter Type: Electronic Shut
Setting Single-shot shooting*1 Continuous shooting *2
Compressed RAW 14-Bit 12-Bit
Uncompressed RAW 14-Bit 12-Bit

My camera records some RAW images in 12-Bits instead of 14-Bits | Sony USA
03-11-2021, 09:27 AM   #13
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The 12-bits is only a matter of data bandwidth and processing speed. There’s no doubt that in the future, and sooner than later, both will improve enough that 14 bits uncompressed will not be too much to be processed fast enough.
03-11-2021, 09:48 AM   #14
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Ok, that source has some detail. The A7sII and A7rII and the A7s drop to 12bit in any mode of ES.
The 1dx2, R5, R6 also do.


Beyond that even the hyper expensive A1 loses dynamic range in ES (very small, but some).
03-11-2021, 05:25 PM   #15
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Interesting. ES is indeed silent in live view but in viewfinder mode due to the mirror movement I don’t think it’s actually much quieter.

I have thought of another use where it could be useful and that’s in interval mode when a very large number of photos are being taken e.g for a time lapse and it’s use could help prevent shutter wear but sadly it’s not allowed in that mode on the kp for some reason. I don’t understand why as it’s allowed for multiple exposure mode.

The best example of the benefits of ES for combatting vibration are I think shown here. I can see why it’s likely essential for pixel shift.

Electronic First Shutter Curtain ? Robert OToole Photography
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